


What Humans Could Learn From Us

by Apikale



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fusion, Kissing, fangirling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9706928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apikale/pseuds/Apikale
Summary: Not finding a mission to occupy them while Steven and company are out rescuing Greg, Peridot and Lapis fawn over Camp Pining Hearts, coming to a conclusion they didn't see coming.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ed-facet2F5I](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ed-facet2F5I).



> Okay, so as of the most recent episode, this fic is obsolete. It's what I get for waiting until Valentine's Day to release it, and for procrastinating (thus the ending might seem a little rushed, but mabes I'll fix it later.)

“You can count on us!”

Those were the magic words.  The rubies’ ship sailed off.

And Lapis and Peridot were left as the sole guardians of the barn, Beach City, and possibly the Earth.

“We aren’t the _only_ ones,” Lapis mused aloud, as though she could hear Peridot’s thoughts.  “I heard Steven tell his friend Connie to keep Beach City safe while they’re gone.”

Peridot frowned.  “And this absolves us of responsibility as protectors, save for the event in which the Connie requires reinforcements.  Unless we encounter the danger first.”  Peridot leaned against the barn wall.  “Then again… she’ll need to know how to reach us just in case.  Human beings are so fragile, you know?”

“All too well,” Lapis agreed as she followed Peridot back into the barn.

Peridot picked up her tablet and messaged Connie on one of the social media sites Steven had shown her.  “Affirmative.  The Connie will message us should she encounter danger beyond her ability to mitigate.”  She collapsed into a beanbag chair.  “So what do we do _now_?”

“There’s supposed to be a _Camp Pining Hearts_ marathon,” Lapis suggested.  “Maybe they’ll air some of the episodes we missed.”

Peridot brightened at this prospect.  The manufacturers of the DVDs had failed to print on the box the fact that the discs reacted negatively to water, and yet the clods at Superior Spend had denied their warranty claim upon learning the gems had stored part of their collection in the aquarium.  As such, Paulette’s ultimate fate at the conclusion of season 6 remained shrouded in mystery.  Peridot was convinced that she had been expelled from the camp in the aftermath of the mid-season forest fire, whereas Lapis believed her to have drowned and reformed as that strange new camper in the show’s seventh and final season.

“Very well,” Peridot concurred.  “Fly us up, Lapis!”

Lapis giggled as she scooped up her barnmate and fluttered up to the TV set.

* * *

It was funny, really, that given the way fusion was a sore subject for both Peridot and Lapis, they were somehow both perfectly comfortable freely joking about the humans’ poor substitute ritual, and even imitating it once in a while.

In fact, imitating it was inexplicably enjoyable.

Lapis had been a little embarrassed when she had first suggested it to Peridot sometime back, and Peridot herself had blushed at the concept, but in the end, they had agreed to do so in private, so no humans could be offended by their mockery of what was clearly a sacred practice.

_Kissing_ , the humans called it.

The gems had only meant to try it once, just to see what all the fuss was about, that evening after Andy DeMayo had officially given his blessing to Lapis and Peridot’s occupancy of the barn.  It hadn’t been anything at all like real fusion, of course.  Lapis was grateful for that.

But still, it felt nice.

So they had tried it again, later, as they procured more meep morps to decorate the exterior of the barn.

And again, when they were fixing the old tractor.

And again on top of the silo.

And now they were _kissing_ again, every time the show was interrupted with more human advertising that held little to no relevance to Lapis or Peridot’s life.  Since the episodes currently airing were pulled from season 5 (on whose status as trash they had easily come to consensus), it could be argued that the station breaks were more fun than the show itself.

Lapis thought so, anyway.

It wasn’t fusion, but the basic components were all there—feeling close to someone, someone whose breath (unnecessary though it might be) was synchronized with her own in a perfect rhythm.  Feeling warm and light and whole, all at the same time.  Sharing arms and mouths and skin.  Being one.

And yet, for all Lapis’ bad memories of real fusion, it didn’t bring up any of the pain, of the dread, of the fear.

Maybe there was something to the humans’ version after all.

“I can see why they like it,” Lapis commented as they broke away when the episode resumed, and Percy and Paulette picked up where Peridot and Lapis had left off.

“Me too,” Peridot verified.  “But how did they figure it out in the first place?  It isn’t like it… accomplishes anything.  Humans can’t really fuse.”  Not that Percy and Paulette weren’t clearly trying.

“Not real fusion, anyway,” Lapis agreed, feeling the rising heat she had when she’d first suggested she and Peridot _kiss_.  “But there’s something else that’s _more_ like it, that the humans do.”  She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.  “I learned a few things while I was stuck in the mirror.”

Peridot’s eyes widened, and Lapis realized those green lips were clenched together to avoid pressing for details about the mirror.  If Lapis was going to elaborate, she would have to volunteer the information herself.  If she even wanted to.

“It’s how they get more humans,” she explained, averting further reference to her imprisonment.  “I don’t know exactly how it works, but two humans can come together to make a new one, just like fusion.  Except with humans, the first two don’t disappear.”

Peridot jumped up, rattling the truck bed and causing the TV to slide a few inches to the left.  “Holy smokes, is that how they make it without kindergartens?!?”  She began to pace.  “This explains everything!  I started to ask Steven once, but he said he’d tell me when I’m older.”  She scoffed.  “I’ve easily got at least a thousand years on that clod.”

“Hey, quit blocking the TV!” Lapis snapped as Peridot obscured her view.  The fifth season might be trash, but this was that one episode where Percy and Pierre had been mysteriously absent for a night, and if there was any hint that they were _kissing_ off-screen, Lapis was not about to miss it.

“Apologies, Lazuli,” Peridot responded, moving aside just as Paulette darted tearfully out of the cabin, leaving Percy shocked and alone in his bunk.  “Although per my recollection, Paulette’s reasoning in this scene is highly flawed.  Percy is better off without her.”

“Percy was _always_ better off without her,” Lapis agreed.  “I sure hope they never human-fuse.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, a detail that salient would have surely made it into the series’ canon,” Peridot asserted.

“It could have happened after the show’s conclusion,” Lapis suggested.

“Highly improbable,” Peridot declared, “given her disappearance prior to the final season.”

“We still don’t know what happened in the second half of season 6.”

“No, but she is seldom mentioned in season 7, and so I’m disinclined to believe they parted on good terms.”  Peridot smiled fondly.  “Whereas that Pierrcy hug in the series finale indicates intent of future contact!”  She froze.  “Lazuli… are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Ha.  I wonder what you would even call the product of fusion between a Percy and a Pierre.”  Lapis reached over and gently guided Peridot to sit down again.

That was when the show once more reverted to commercials.

Peridot reflexively closed her eyes and pursed her lips, and Lapis was just about to indulge her when something on the screen caught her eye.

It wasn’t one of the typical parades of human food, human clothing, human tax services (whatever those were).  Instead, five humans sat on a stage, surrounded by a cheering audience.  One of them, a man with a spiffy tie and a wide smile, held up a microphone and sat opposite the other four.  Two of them, a male and a female, looked vaguely familiar, but Lapis was having trouble placing exactly where she had seen them.  The other two, however, she knew instantly.

They were Percy and Pierre.

“Oh my stars!” Peridot gasped, having realized Lapis was not about to proceed with the osculation and turned her own eyes to the television set.  “What’s happened to them?  Have they been corrupted?  Did they reform too hastily?  They don’t look the same!”

Lapis couldn’t answer that, but she had to concur.  The men on the screen, while clearly the Percy and Pierre they knew and loved, had changed, somehow, over the course of time since the last episode.  Percy’s blonde hairline was receding, although his arms and chin had acquired more hair than they had had before.  Pierre’s formerly-black hair was streaked with bits of gray, and a pair of glasses rested at the end of his nose.  Both men were significantly stouter than before, and Lapis wondered if they were as swift of runners or as strong of swimmers as they had been in the last episode.

“This is Robert Maple, reporting from Marimerces at this year’s Pinecon!  We’re celebrating 25 years since that first episode aired, and by the looks of it, the fans are still just as pumped today as they were when Percy and Paulette professed their love on top of the mess hall!  Am I right, ‘Paulette’?”

And sure enough, the female onstage giggled and nodded.  Paulette had changed even more than her counterparts, save for the one whom Lapis now recognized as Patrick.  Her hair was now a dark brown instead of its former vibrant red, and her skin had taken on a slight orange tinge that could almost have passed for a Jasper.

Lapis cringed, and from the way Peridot looked over at her, she had clearly noticed the same.

Oblivious to the memories stirred up in Lapis or the protectiveness with which Peridot responded, Paulette replied to Robert Maple’s question casually.  “Sure seems like it from here!  Thanks for watching, my lovelies!”

“So tell me.  How has your acting career been impacted in the years since you left the show?”

Paulette grinned.  “Well, as much as I ‘heart’ the Pining Hearts, I don’t regret the decision I made.  I’m still acting, but once you become a mother, your priorities change a bit.  Luckily, there are some parts of the show that I will never leave.”

She turned and kissed Patrick right then and there.  The audience cheered.

“So Paulette… and… Patrick?” Peridot stuttered.  “I didn’t see that one coming at all!”

“Me neither,” said Lapis.  “But I guess they’re okay for each other.  It gets Paulette out of the way.”

The gems had missed the question, but Pierre was now answering.

“Well I… I think Percy and Pierre still have a… a special connection.  A profound bond, of sorts.  He’s like the brother he never had, you know?”

Percy added, “I think that’s something that’s open to however the fans like to interpret it.  If that’s how you see their relationship, then that’s a fair reading.  I have to say, I’ve seen some pretty outstanding fanart since the show ended, stuff that I wish could’ve been in the show, and today it probably could have, but you know, it was different back then.”

“What was different?”  Peridot was puzzled.

Robert Maple looked back into the camera.  “Well, there you have it folks, live from Pinecon.  Dream on, ship on, watch on.  Let’s get back to that marathon.”

“Wait wait wait, were they talking about human-fusion?” Peridot asked, no longer attentive to the melodrama on the screen.

“I think it might’ve been _kissing_?”  Lapis mused.

“Well… if Paulette and Patrick could _kiss_ onstage, why couldn’t Percy and Pierre?  Better yet… why can’t they human-fuse?”

“Human-fusion is more private, from what I understand.  And who knows?  Maybe they don’t want to _kiss_.”

“Oh please, anyone can see those two clods have wanted to fuse since season one.  And did you see the way their vision spheres lit up when they looked at each other, even now that they’ve become less attractive by human standards?”

“Maybe they don’t know they want to fuse?” Lapis posited.

“Well… then why hasn’t anybody told them??” Peridot demanded of the television, as though the set were going to answer her.

The logic seemed very straightforward to Lapis.  “What if we told them?”

Peridot’s eyes sparkled like two bright green stars.  “We should tell them in person!  They betrayed their whereabouts in their broadcast, so tracking down them down should be as simple as punching the coordinates into the rubies’… ship… which is currently not in our custody.”  Peridot’s face fell as she remembered.

“That’s not the only way for us to get there,” Lapis reminded Peridot, and sure enough, two water wings sprouted from her back and flexed twice.

Peridot gasped.  “You’d be… comfortable… making the whole flight to Marimerces with… with me?” she stammered.

Lapis giggled and tossed Peridot over her shoulder easily.  “More than comfortable.”

They soared above the barn.

* * *

It was turning into a windy night above the clouds, so conversations were short and had to be yelled, but the silence wasn’t awkward.  Indeed, every time Peridot felt a gust of air, or saw a bright light, or heard aggressive human traffic from below—every time there was anything worth noting, she felt like Lapis had noted it too, and one of them had somehow told the other without saying a word.

They’d been flying for hours, but the excitement rose in Peridot as though they had just taken off.

“How are you holding up?” she called, for the twentieth time.

“I’m good!” Lapis assured her.  “Just… hang on a little tighter and I can go a little faster!”

“Like this?” Peridot’s arms migrated from Lapis’ shoulders to around her waist.  Lapis startled, but picked up the pace.

“Yeah, like that!”

The wind died down a little bit, and Peridot found she could speak at a more typical volume.  “Don’t worry about me, I’m not going anywhere!”

It was hard to tell from her position on Lapis’ back, but Peridot thought the blue gem might have smiled.  “Never hurts to be safe.  I wouldn’t want to drop you in the ocean!”

The words tumbled carelessly out of Peridot’s mouth, and she instantly wished she could put them back in: “We wouldn’t have to worry about that if only we could fuse.”  She gasped, shocked at her own insensitivity.  How would Lapis react?  Would she need to stop to rest?  That happened, sometimes.  Jasper would come up in conversation, and the next thing Peridot knew, Lapis was on the floor, hugging herself, frightened all over again.  Fusion had never been a good experience for Lapis, and the last thing Peridot should have done was bring it up.

Indeed, Lapis didn’t say anything for what felt like millennia.  But then, finally, she asked: “Can you fuse?”

Peridot was taken aback.  Of all the objections Lapis could have, that wasn’t what she was expecting.  “I… I what?”

“I’ve been wanting to ask you, but I wasn’t sure how,” Lapis began, swallowing.  “I… I know you can’t shapeshift.  And I’m really sorry about that.  I can’t imagine what that would be like.  And if fusion is related to shapeshifting, then maybe you can’t do it either?”

“Fusion and shapeshifting aren’t the same thing,” Peridot corrected her.  “Fusion is induced via the interplay between two approximate gems.  Shapeshifting is its own process that redistributes the projection from within the gem.”  Peridot squeezed more tightly before admitting, “But… I don’t know if I can do either.  I’ve tried shapeshifting.  I’ve tried fusing.  It’s never worked.  Era Two peridots don’t really need to fuse, so I doubt Homeworld would’ve given me that ability.”

Lapis nodded sympathetically.  “But if… say you could.  Would you consider fusing with me?”

“Naturally!  If earth rules let a ruby and a sapphire stay permafused, what could be objectionable about a peridot and a lapis?”

“But would you want to?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”  Lapis was strong, clever, powerful, beautiful.  The chance to become a part of such a magnificent being made Peridot shiver with wonder.

Lapis exhaled and slowed down a bit.  She crossed her arms against her chest, the way she did whenever she felt bad.  “Because… because Jasper said you wouldn’t.”

“Huh?  What does that clod know about what I want?”  Actually, “clod” felt like too mild of a word for Jasper, and Amethyst had taught Peridot a couple of words that seemed more applicable, but Steven had told Peridot that those words must never be uttered under any circumstances, that they were cursed or something.  Peridot wished she knew what that curse was; perhaps it would be worth it anyway.

“She didn’t say you specifically,” Lapis clarified.  “But lots of times, when we were Malachite, she told me that I was lucky she didn’t just leave.  She said nobody else would want to fuse with someone who… someone who…”  Lapis’ voice broke, and her whole body shook.  “She said I’d caused too much damage for the Crystal Gems to want me, and that nobody from Homeworld would want someone who didn’t do what she was told.  She said if I left, I’d always be alone.  Nobody to fuse with, or even… or even to talk to.”

Tears dripped from Lapis’ eyes, raining upon plants miles below the gems.

“I’d love to fuse with somebody, anybody, just to show her she’s wrong.  But usually, I’m scared that she’s right.”

“That coprolite is _not_ right!”  There.  That was a better word than _clod_.  “You’ve got lots of people to talk to!  You can talk to me any time you like!  Or Steven, or Amethyst, or even Pearl or Garnet.  And… and I really wish I could fuse with you.”  A selfish thought gripped the back of Peridot’s mind.  She didn’t want to be “anybody.”  She wanted Lapis to choose her, specifically, to fuse with.

She couldn’t articulate why, but she wanted Lapis for herself.

“But not just to show Jasper she’s wrong.  We know she’s wrong.”

A wry giggle escaped from Lapis.  “And that’s why I’d want to fuse with you.”

“Elaborate?”

“Because even though we both hate Jasper, it’s different for you.  You know she’s wrong all the time.  You don’t care at all about what she thinks.  You know what it’s like to feel like you’re right.”

“That’s because I am right!”

“Exactly!  I want to be right for once, too.  Peridot, if I fused with you, I could stop doubting myself.  If I had your confidence, your conviction, if I could move forward and change despite everything I’ve done… I wish, more than anything, that I could feel that way.  That I could feel what you feel and be a piece of what you are.”

Peridot exhaled.  Lapis.  A piece of her.  Herself.  A piece of Lapis.

Whatever they became, it would be extraordinary.

Now if only it were _possible_.

“I would be enthralled to fuse with you, Lapis,” Peridot told her.  “But seeing as I can’t… I still want to be a piece of you, as best as I can.  I like being with you.”

Lapis’ hands worked their way down from her chest to her stomach, where they met Peridot’s firm grasp.  Firm, that is, until Lapis gently pried Peridot’s hands apart and interlocked the fingers of her right hand with those of Peridot’s left, the fingers of her left hand with those of Peridot’s right.

They held each other tightly all the way to Marimerces.

* * *

Finding the convention wasn’t the least bit difficult, thanks to signage and the fact that hundreds of people dressed in camp uniforms were milling about in the parking lot.  Some had even set up tents in the woods adjacent to the convention center.  Getting in, however, proved to be an entirely different matter.

“Badges, please,” a bored-looking security guard demanded as Peridot and Lapis attempted to walk in the door.

Peridot nodded boldly and pulled out her kindergarten certification.  The man looked at the silver medallion for about two seconds, giggled, and tossed it aside.

“Hey clod, I earned that!” Peridot protested as she dove after it.

“Ya got the wrong con, missy,” he told her without sympathy.

“We are not at the wrong convention!  We’re here on a mission to free Percy and Pierre from their state of oblivion!  If we don’t tell them the truth, then who will?”  She tried to push past the guard, but he scooped her up under her armpits and set her down outside again, prompting a hiss and the baring of teeth.

“It’s all right, Peridot,” Lapis assured her quickly.  Something about the way the man reached for something in a holster on his hip did not bode well.  It was likely best to get away from the man.  “Someone else will tell them.  We’ll just… be going.”

She guided Peridot into the parking lot, where the green gem kicked a lamppost and yelped in pain when it did not give in easily.

“All this way,” Peridot muttered.  “We came all this way and we’re blocked by a clod without a gem or a weapon!”

“I’m not so sure about the weapon,” Lapis warned.  “We’ll find another way inside.”

“But it’s late,” Peridot groaned.  “It won’t be long before all the humans in that complex have fallen asleep, and then we’ll have to wait eight hours before they wake up again.”

“Where do they sleep?” Lapis inquired.  “The stream during the marathon didn’t make it look like they had room to lie down.”

A light came on in one of the windows of the center’s upper stories.  Out of curiosity, Lapis fluttered up to the window and peered in.

There was a human, also dressed in a camp uniform, albeit a sloppy, disheveled one.  The human seemed to have little to no coordination as they flopped down onto… a bed.

“Peridot!” Lapis cried.  Out of her peripheral vision, she could tell that the human inside the room had startled when she shouted, but she didn’t care.  “Peridot, they’ve got to be in one of these rooms.  All we need to do is find out which one.”  She flew back down to scoop up her friend.

“We’ll have to check them systematically,” Peridot reasoned.  “Our options are to start at the bottom and work our way upwards, or start at the top and work our way down.”

“I vote top to bottom,” Lapis declared.  “Let’s give that security guard some time to forget he ever saw us.”

“I suppose there is sound reasoning in that,” Peridot agreed.  “At any rate, it was your idea, so we shall execute it according to your judgment.”

Lapis and Peridot soared fifteen stories up the side of the building.  It wasn’t terribly tall, like Homeworld sea spires, but it was extremely wide.  Surveying every room could very well take half an hour per story; if that were the case, it might be nearly morning by the time they found Percy and Pierre’s quarters.

But they had to try.

The first room they looked into was completely empty and dark, even after Peridot contributed the luminescent properties of her gem to its examination.

The second was filled with a gaggle of giggling adolescent girls.

The third had a human man and a human woman _kissing_.  At least, they were doing so until they noticed the gems peering inside, at which point they slammed the curtains shut.

The fourth room featured an attempt at human-fusion, making Lapis wish she could’ve closed the curtains herself.

The fifth held a family with three small children, one of whom was crying very loudly as her human mother tried to calm her down.

The sixth had its curtains already drawn.

“We can’t open them from this side to check,” Lapis lamented, but Peridot shook her head.

“Season two, episode eight.  Patrick tried to hang curtains in the cabin windows, and Pierre refused because he perceived their lacey properties to be associated with the wrong biological sex.”

“What do curtains have to do with sex?”

“You got me.  But Pierre would never use curtains no matter where he went given the choice.  That said, I think we can safely eliminate all rooms obscured by draperies.  Onward.”

Another empty room.

A room with a few unconscious humans lying across the beds.

Two more rooms with curtains.

More _kissing_ , more “fusion”.

Two more empty rooms.

A fat man in a suit typing frantically away on a laptop.

One more room with curtains…

“Discouraging, but we’ve still got plenty of rooms to check!” Peridot observed as they neared the end of the row.

Yet as it turned out, they would need to look no farther.

For in the very last room, the one perched on the corner of the building, there stood two men—one blonde and balding, the other bespectacled and graying.

“Look, Mike, I’ve missed you too, don’t get me wrong.  But like… the ship’s sailed, man.”  Pierre sat down on the bed.

Percy kept pacing.  “So what are you saying, Tony?  That you just aren’t feeling it anymore?  Or that you’re glad it’s over?”

“‘Mike’ and ‘Tony’?”  Peridot was puzzled.  “Are those terms of endearment?”

“I’m not sure… ‘Mike.’”  Lapis smiled a little bit on one side of her mouth.

Pierre/Tony clenched his hand.  “Don’t put words in my mouth.  You know why it had to end.  Officially, you’re the one who called it off.”

Percy/Mike wrapped his arms around himself in a fashion very similar to that of Lapis.  “It wasn’t my choice.”

“Of course it was your choice.  It was always your choice!”

“But it’s not my choice anymore, is that it?”

“Then what am I supposed to do when it stops being your choice again?  When you walk away again?”

“I never wanted to.”

“Then why.  Did.  You?”

Peridot frowned.  “This isn’t like the ending at all.  In canon they parted on good terms!”

“This is a serious continuity error,” Lapis agreed.

Percy/Mike sat down next to Pierre/Tony.  “Look, I know I was an ass before, but I had my reasons and those reasons are gone now.  I’ve grown.  And I mean, I get it if you don’t want me back…”

“I do want you back!  But it’s been forever, we can’t just pick up where we left off.  I wanted it to work, but…”

“But it’s over, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it over?”

“Wow, ‘Tony’, these clods take forever to cut to the chase!” Peridot groaned.

“We’ve got to help them!”  Lapis flew over the railing of the balcony and knocked on the sliding-glass door.  Peridot scrambled after her.

Percy and Pierre both jumped in alarm.

“We’ve come to alleviate your tension and offer you an objective outsider’s analysis of optimal pairings!” Peridot declared as the door flew open.

“Tony?  Are you seeing this?”  Percy gestured to the gems as they walked in.

“Yeah Mike… like I’ve seen some creepy stalkers, but I think this is the first time we’ve had fangirls climb in our window!”

“Never mind the mechanism of our entrance.  We’re on a mission!”

“Percy.  Pierre.  Why don’t you just _kiss_ already?”

“Man, if we had a nickel for every time a chick asked us that!”  Pierre ran a hand through his hair.

“Not as much in recent years, though,” Pierre said sadly.

“I’m serious!” Peridot exclaimed.  “Look, I don’t know what kind of history you guys have had since you left Camp Pining Hearts.  I don’t know how many limb enhancers you’ve lost or if you’ve been stuck in a mirror or whatever.”

“Or who you’ve fused with,” Lapis added.  “Or how you felt about it.”

“But we do know that Percy and Pierre made for an unstoppable team!”

“Without even fusing, you were able to understand each other’s pain in a way nobody else could.  You were there for each other even when Paulette left you, even when the camp authorities falsely accused you, even when you got stranded on the island in the middle of the lake.”

“So are you seriously going to take a relationship like that…”

A mighty flash flooded the room.

“…and let it go to waste?”

Aquamarine opened her eyes.

* * *

Two humans stood before her, jaws dropping, before Percy grabbed Pierre’s hand and they ran from the room.

Aquamarine tried to follow them, but she was so tall now that her head hit the doorframe.

“Hey watch it, clod!” she gasped.  “Wait a minute… I’m the clod!”  She looked down her front.  “I’m… I’m the clod!”

She ran back to the dresser to look into the full-sized mirror, although she still had to kneel down in order to see herself.

What she saw was breathtaking.

The gem on her forehead was now a hexagon of blue-green, a better match for the ocean than Lapis’ gem had ever been.  Framing her face was a mass of teal hair, long and loose like Lapis’, but with full body and texture like Peridot’s.

And the dress.

Green and blue, old and new, floating around her knees above tall boots that felt as soft as sand under her heels.

She stretched her wings… metal frames, now, skeletal like a bat’s but with jets positioned just so.

“We… I could get pretty far with these!” Aquamarine gasped.

She ran to the balcony and jumped off.

It was both exactly and nothing at all like the night had been before.  All the cool wind, all the bright stars, that giddy excitement on her face… but this time, there was none of that doubt, none of that yearning, because she had become everything she wanted to be.

Strong.  Smart.  Confident.  Powerful.  Master of the sea and of all the ships that sailed on it and above it.

Whole.

“This is amazing!” she shouted into the night, not caring for a second who might hear… except hoping just a tiny bit that Percy and Pierre would learn by her example.

Hmmm.

Perhaps she should check on them…

She flew back to Percy and Pierre’s room.

The curtains were drawn.

Aquamarine decided not to think about what that meant.

“My work here is done.  I guess it’s back to Beach City with me… I’d better be careful not to unfuse and drop Peridot!  Don’t worry, I’ve got this…”

She flew, not bouncy and rough with the flapping of wings, but smooth, with streams of water trailing behind her wake.

As the sea had once been hers, so now was the sky.  She felt like if she wanted to, she could pull the atmosphere into a fierce whirlwind all her own, one that could engulf the planet.  Not that she would, because Aquamarine knew better, and had never made a mistake like Lapis had because she had only just come into existence.

Aquamarine was going to be a better gem than Lapis or Peridot had ever been.  Better in life, better in meepmorp, better in battle…

Battle.

Peridot’s tablet was glowing.  How it had found the wifi likely had something to do with Peridot’s ability combined with Lapis’ range, but the exact mechanism would have to be explored later.

For now, Connie and the citizens of Beach City needed her.

And she was finally there to take that call.

 


End file.
